Culver Town Council to Discuss High Speed Rail

Culver Town Council members have scheduled a work session for Tuesday, August 12th. The meeting has been called to discuss a high speed rail project.
The proposed high-speed rail project would run 110 m.p.h. and starts in Chicago and goes through Gary, Valparaiso, Plymouth, Warsaw, Fort Wayne, Lima, Ohio and a couple other communities in Ohio before getting to Columbus.
High speed rail committee members have discussed potential users and the economic impact the high speed rail will have. There are several Fortune 500 companies within a short distance of a stop on the route. There are also 141 institutions of higher education within 25 miles of the rail heads along the route.
At a meeting in Plymouth earilier this year is was noted that Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio are well ahead of Indiana in this process and now is the time to make Indiana, especially northeast Indiana a leader in passenger rail development.
The high speed rail would use existing railroad right-of-way using the old Pennsylvania Rail line which runs right through downtown Plymouth. The association projects 10 trains daily going each direction for a total of 20 trains. It is anticipated that half of those trains would stop in Plymouth daily.
The Northeast Indiana Passenger Rail Association projects 2 million passengers a year will use the rail system.
The Culver meeting on Tuesday will be in the town hall at 5 p.m.

This entry was posted on August 8, 2014 at 5:43 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to “ Culver Town Council to Discuss High Speed Rail ”

Thor on August 8, 2014 at 9:25 pm

This high speed rail ‘proposal’ is looking for only a couple of million dollars to do a study…not to build anything. They have also stated in public meetings that the trains would not run over 100mph because existing tracks could not support it.

They do not address un-signaled crossings. Who is the first volunteer to pull up to the tracks, do a quick look left look right and cross the tracks with 100mpg trains on it? Or because of the cost of upgrading the crossing will those roads just be closed?

I have read their pie in the sky proposal on economic impact. According to what they have written when a train runs on the rails 1/4 mile from my house my bank account goes up…funny, I haven’t noticed that. They make blanket statements that the property values will increase and everyone will get a positive economic impact if you live within x miles of the rails…really? In what bizarre land does that happen? Those rails are there today, how much extra will you see when a faster train rolls on it? Lemme see, take zero add zero carry the zero…

We had steam engines that could run as fast as this train is claiming to go. Why don’t we still? It’s not because they were profitable enough to maintain the lines that’s for sure. It was because by the time the riders had to pay a fare that would make them run no one rode. What do you think the fares would have to be to cover the (optimistic) 10 Billion in construction costs and that’s if they don’t have to do any track improvements.

But hey, as long as we can suck the money out of EVERYONES wallet what’s to lose? Give them 2 mil and listen to the rose colored outcomes. I’m sure it will be just as profitable as AMTRAC. I’m sure the ridership will be just grand and that they’ll never stop stopping at the small towns in between because it just doesn’t pay.

Where is that bridge I had to sell, P. T. Barnum seems to have been a pessimist.

The am1050.com website and ALL its content is the property of WTCA, Community Service Broadcasting, Plymouth, Indiana. Any Use or copy of this website's content is a copyright infringement without the consent of WTCA Management.